Conventionally, attempts to communicate or provide compatible commands to a protocol or computer-based language may include the parsing of incoming messages and the building of outgoing messages. Java® (hereafter ‘Java’) and controllers or control systems lack built-in functions to perform such parsing and building functions as part of the actual computer language itself. Instead, complex routines must be written to decipher an incoming message and/or to build outgoing messages.
In computer science terms Java is a 3rd generation language or a general purpose high-level language. Controllers can be categorized as a mixture of 3rd generation and 4th generation languages. A 4th generation language is one that is designed specifically to solve a particular problem. In the case of a controller, its purpose was to communicate with an Internet control system protocol (ICSP)/AxLink type of device. Conventional programming languages and corresponding interpretation engines have yet to combine high-level language interpretation with protocol translation.